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Beast

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Everything posted by Beast

  1. Beast
    Since they’ve take over about 7-8 years ago, we’re supposed to heap praise on them for making those 3 trades, but botching about a dozen? They’ve traded for more injured or useless pitchers that they’ve gotten nothing out of alone (Mahle, Paddack, Dyson, Shaun Anderson) than trades that have worked out. Escobar has been an All Star since he left here while being a primary 3B - a position of need for us since the trade. He’s also played games at 2B and SS. He’s accumulated nearly 10 oWAR over that time. He’s put up OPS+ numbers of 102, 111, 109, 107, 115, and 107 at his various stops along the way (some of those are partial years). He did have a very rough 2020 with an injury and got off to a slow start this year, otherwise has been a well above average hitter for a number of years now. Other than 2020, he consistently available and playing 140+ games (something nobody else on this roster can do). He’s a pretty darn good player. Jhoan Duran is freaking awesome, but he’s a reliever we use twice per week on a team that can’t score a run. There’s only so much value there. We can’t say the Sonny Gray trade is a success. He’s in his mid 30s. He’s been largely good here, but Chase Petty has a career 3.06 ERA with 125 Ks/37 BB in 123 innings, primarily in low/high A as a 19 year old. This year, he’s started 5 games and allowed 1 earned run with more than a K per inning and about 2 walks per 9. That could turn out to be an awful trade. He might be our top pitching prospect right now with a bullet. The Mahle and Jorge Lopez trades are unmitigated disasters. Have you seen what Steer and CES are doing right now? CES is slashing .362/.427/.735 at AAA. Spencer Steer has a 118 OPS+ in the majors. Buxton and Correa, our superstars, have a 113 and 97 OPS+. ESPN is doing front page features about Cano being the best reliever in baseball. How about Lamonte Wade Jr.? That 139 OPS+ would sure be nice in this lineup. We traded him for a middle reliever who gave up 9 runs over 8 innings before being DFA’d. There is absolutely no question these guys have done extremely poorly on the trade market. They’ve had a couple nice trades (Ryan being the best), but overall they have gotten fleeced, repeatedly. There is not even a debate that can be had there. The amount of talent they’ve given away that is thriving vastly outweighs what they’ve gotten in return. It’s not even close. It’s OK to say that. It doesn’t make you less of a fan or more of a ball guy.
  2. Beast
    Part of me wishes this team were in a better division so there wasn’t an out for those running this thing. They’re terrible, but they’ll still probably win the division. All the “ball guys” will heap praise on the FO for “winning.” This thing needs a bottom-out and good house cleaning. It’s a dead end road that’s we’re on. I’m done with it. Same thing every year.
  3. Beast
    A good reason why it’s good to go after free agents, even when the team may not have high aspirations. You can continue to add to your prospect pool instead of just sitting in stasis waiting to catch lightning in a bottle on a current prospect.
  4. Beast
    This team is a joke. And people still simp for Falvine like they’re beyond reproach. I’m not seeing any signs that they know how to compile a serviceable roster. It’s the same thing every year now. A constant quest to beat the system and find “value” in these obscure analytics darlings that can’t actually play baseball. Then, it falls apart after about a month of decent ball, and everyone is shocked. Can you imagine the reaction in a real baseball market if they ran a guy like Max Kepler out there after hitting .150 with no power for what’s now about a full season. And he stunk for 2 years before that? Not only that, but sending down a top prospect down who’s in the middle of a 1.500 OPS fire storm to make room for him? Or, taking one of the best defensive center fielders in the history of the game and making him a DH to try and milk 50 extra hobbled ABs out of him? Or, burning Bailey Ober’s innings in AAA for the zombie corpse of Kenta Maeda? All while watching guys like Spencer Steer, Luis Arraez, Tyler Wells, Yanier Cano, and a number of others absolutely flourish. It’s a parody of how a baseball team should be run at this point. Every decision they make is the wrong one. They are bad at this.
  5. Beast
    The team is full of guys who hit home runs? We have nobody in the top 25 in the MLB in home runs. We have 3 in the top 100, and one is Michael Taylor. Carlos Correa and Max Kepler sit squarely tied with Robbie Grossman and CJ Cron at 115th (along with about 40 other guys). We are 7th overall in the MLB in home runs right now, but I feel like that’s temporary.
  6. Beast
    We don’t have depth. At the very least, the depth is grossly overstated. Many of the Saints best pitchers are guys that wouldn’t be here regardless (Murphy, Sanchez, Schulfer, Lawyerson, Sadzeck De Leon have the best ERAs with over 20 IP). Guys like Headrick, Winder, Balazovic, Dobnak, SWR, Henriquez have been bad. Offesnively, I’m not sure Julien is ready to be here regardless of our “depth.” I wouldn’t say it’s “depth” blocking Wallner, it poor roster management. The rest of the guys producing with significant ABs are Contreras, Stevenson, Perez, Bechtold, Williams. None of those guys would or should be here. They’re largely being carried by guys who aren’t impacted by our “depth.” The one exception may be Wallner. In my book, depth means there’s too many high quality players for the number spots (or something along those lines). We have 5 guys that have played more than 30 games with an OPS above league average (Buxton, Gallo, Jeffers, Castro, Solano). One of those is over .800 (Jeffers). One of those is below .750 largely as a first baseman (Solano). League average AL OPS right now is around .720. That’s flat out awful. That’s the opposite of depth.
  7. Beast
    Between Lewis, Miranda, and Lee, I would say there’s a decent chance one of them pans out and fills that hole. But, I need to remind myself that this is the Twins. We’ve been waiting on the next great prospect since Puckett. The number of career derailing injuries is nuts (Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, Liriano, Buxton, Lewis, Kirilloff, could maybe add Sano to the list with the rod and Gordon with the illnesses, off the top of the head). I’m having a flashback to that incredible logjam in the OF we had a couple years ago (maybe even months ago)? Now we’re seeing starting lineups with Garlick, Taylor, and Castro. Things change quickly.
  8. Beast
    Lewis is incredible. He just exudes leadership and success. You hear the Jeter comparison all the time, and I never saw until this last week. I agree with everyone saying Wallner needs to be up here. Absolutely gross roster mismanagement there. I don’t want to hear the excuses. Play your damn best players. He’s the hottest hitter in the organization right now and has the kind of power that can carry a team….as we’re playing our division rival. It’s moves like this that make me want this FO gone. Same thing with Ober earlier in the year. They need to learn when to cut the rope on dead weight. We got fleeced on Lopez. I was huge fan of the trade and still am of the attempt. But it’s looking bad at the moment. Lastly, the ads on this site make it borderline unusable on mobile.
  9. Beast
    We should be impressed that they’ve gotten elite starting pitching from multiple guys and still can’t find a way to separate themselves from the worst division in baseball? We’re talking about the likes of Sonny Gray, here. Good pitcher, but that guy isn’t going to throw up a 1.50 ERA indefinitely going forward. He’s going to come back to earth. So is Joe Ryan (as we saw last night). I’m not impressed at all that they’ve found a way to squander the best run of starting pitching I’ve seen here in my lifetime. I’m more worried about what it looks like when that normalizes and regression catches up to those starters. Things could get very ugly. We’re sure as heck not going to be carried by this offense or bullpen. We’re starting to see it catch up with them now, losing 4 series in a row and a likely 5th in Houston.
  10. Beast
    Lewis just seems to have a certain mental/internal fortitude that has largely been lacking from this roster. I’m surprised they called him up right away. I thought they would let him wallow down in St. Paul until their hand were absolutely forced. Good decision and good performance by Royce. What a stud.
  11. Beast
    This club is a joke. Get Baldelli out of here. The league needs to fix this crap (if it isn’t intentional). A team walks that many guys through the game (aka. done nothing to earn the benefit of the doubt) and you call a ball a foot off the plate a strike with bases juiced for a strikeout? Absolutely disgraceful. Winning and losing is such a fine line in this league that you just can’t be successful if you’re getting those called as often as the Twins are.
  12. Beast
    I don’t care whether they admit it. I’m more concerned as to why they’re repeatedly wrong, specifically on these relievers (and numerous times on starters), and why they seemingly can’t learn from it. There’s clearly a flaw in the way they interpret data. Throw all the fancy numbers out on Pagan you want. The fact is, he’s one of the worst relievers in major league history in terms of results. Get off my lawn with this “pitching + is in the top half of the league” stuff. What a waste of time and energy. Im tired of the excuses made for the FO. Sure, finding relievers is hard. It’s unpredictable. But, their job is to get it right. That’s their only job - and there’s two of them doing it. Similar to Pagan, I don’t care about the underlying trash-in trash-out computer program that contorts data to paint whatever picture you want. My great grandmother could throw a bullpen and have AI find a way to make her look like Mariano Rivera. I care about real things. Real things like them trading “the best reliever in game right now,” according to ESPN’s front page, for Jorge Lopez. The historically inept Orioles are now fleecing us and turning our castoffs into stars. We saw it with Liam Hendricks, Nick Anderson, etc. They consistently make the wrong choice when it comes to the bullpen. At some point, you have to stop pointing at luck and randomness.
  13. Beast
    Hader is a realistic target, IMO, who would have a huge impact. Our bullpen stinks. I don’t know why anybody still thinks Jorge Lopez is good. Is it the same formula that’s telling people Pagan is good? He’s had one good half of baseball in his entire career. The results since he’s gotten here haven’t been good, and the metrics don’t support anything (ERA and FIP are both in the neighborhood if 4.00+). I don’t care about his spin rate, etc. He can’t get hitters out. People are constantly ripping on the offense, but they haven’t been as bad as people think. This big issue right now is the ineptitude in holding a tight lead late in the game.
  14. Beast
    Pretty simple: Lower than ideal baseball IQ and mental fortitude. That’s been the problem with this team for multiple seasons now. My observation from recent situations: They seem to look hesitant to swing at strikes early in the count. They get behind, then wildly flail at sliders down and away or fastballs up and out of the zone. Once they get behind in the count, it’s over. There is no battle in any of these guys. You never see them go from a 1-2 count to a 3-2. They’re incapable of prolonging the AB by fouling off pitches or spitting on sliders in the dirt or fastballs at their shoulders. I’m not sure this is a small sample size. Has this not been going on for multiple years now? I could be wrong there. Haven’t looked at the numbers. Certainly doesn’t help when every borderline ball/strike call goes against them in those situations. There was an awful strike call on Jeffers again yesterday to put him down 0-1 (I believe). But, at some point, you have to swing the bat and get the ball in play somewhere. Nobody in this team can do that.
  15. Beast
    It’s not just Pagan, although the should’ve been gone long ago. The entire pen stinks. Duran is all we have. Even Lopez, who had been good, can’t be trusted. I’d bet anything he unravels at some point this year, like he did last year. The FO needs to figure out how to get a serviceable bullpen cobbled together. None of the good things with the lineup and rotation matter if our pen gives up 3+ runs every night.
  16. Beast
    I’ve had it with this FO and the bullpen. Just awful.
  17. Beast
    Huge bounce back win after one of the most epic and blatant ump screw jobs in MLB history.. That’s not easy to do - ask the Minnesota Wild. Should be up 2-0, already locking up the series win. But what can you do? Ober continues to expose the absolutely awful decision to send him to AAA so they could continue to run zombie Kenta Maeda out there. Who knows how many games that cost us. If their hand wasn’t forced, we’d probably still be burning these superb outings in AAA while the back end of our rotation loses games. That’s concerning to me. The FO deserves a ton of credit in some aspects, they also deserve to be roasted in others. Overall, pretty happy with how things are going right now.
  18. Beast
    Absurd. Baseball games are routinely very close. Expanding the strike zone by a foot on either side of the plate in extra innings with the bases loaded, then shrinking it back the next half inning, isn’t just missing an inconsequential call. That’s changing the game entirely. That’s NBA level manipulative foul garbage right there. Let’s say he did just happen to “miss” those calls at the unbelievably important juncture of the game. The ones he somehow got right for Lopez’s walk off walk. He should be in the unemployment line before the game ended last night. That’s a level of incompetence that is unacceptable (if “missed”). There’s a big difference in missing a pitch on the black that a computer called slightly different. This was multiple pitches in the most important AB of the game. Look at the WPA swing as a result. An ump swinging a game that drastically is a major, major issue. Absolutely ridiculous, IMO, to write that off as a non-contributing factor, and we should’ve done more. Could we have done more? Sure. But, we shouldn’t have had to. That’s a huge issue, and fans should rightfully be pissed off and expect some consequence.
  19. Beast
    That game is why people think sports are rigged. And they’re right. That’s just blatant. Whether it’s an unconscious or not. The umpire took one of the hottest hitters in baseball out of the game with the bases loaded in extra innings. Same ump, if I recall, that turned the Yankees playoff series on its head by Joe Mauer’s clear double a foul ball. If the Twins even rarely got these calls at the expense of the Dodgers or Yankees, I’d say fair play. Win some lose some. But, there is such clear bias at work there, I can only conclude it’s flat out rigged.
  20. Beast
    With Kirilloff seemingly back to pre-injury and Correa heating up….buckle up. We might have something here.
  21. Beast
    Getting Larnach going, and Royce Lewis back up to speed, could have a huge impact on the Twins offense. Good to see.
  22. Beast
    The “surplus” has evaporated pretty quickly. Kirilloff is done as an outfielder. Larnach can’t hit the broad side of a barn right now. Gordon, despite some good ABs recently has been one of the worst players in the MLB. Taylor started off great, but is back to earth. Buxton has been relegated to DH duty. Remember when about 75% of the people here thought the Gallo signing was awful and we absolutely had to move Kepler for a bag of peanuts? We might be looking at the worst hitting outfields in the history of the game right now. Pretty good moves by the FO despite the public backlash.
  23. Beast
    He’s been a good pitcher for a long time. He just struggles to stay healthy. I think that’s where the sustainability question comes in. I was a huge proponent of piggy backing him with someone else when the consensus was “there’s no room” (which was always absurd). Similar to the opener concept. Let him go 4-5 innings in tandem with someone else. Use him as a long reliever, but not a throwaway type role. Put him into a 5-4 ball game in the fifth inning and let him bridge to Duran in the 9th. Get creative. The dumbest thing you can do is waste his limited innings in AAA. That was idiotic from the beginning. Never should’ve happened, especially when it’s for a guy like Maeda who hasn’t been healthy or good in 3 years. Awful use of resources. He’s a heck of a lot more sustainable than Varland, SWR, Maeda, even Mahle at this point….anything outside of Gray, Lopez, and Ryan
  24. Beast
    I think Gordon has played well enough lately to save his roster spot just before the clock struck midnight on his career. Good for him. I’ve changed my mind from jettisoning Gordon all together to sending down Larnach for Kirillof. An injury will present itself soon enough to get Larnach back up if he performs.
  25. Beast
    Another bench bat would be nice. But, if Kepler continues to hit a little bit, and Miranda and Correa get going as the weather warms, we’re going to score plenty of runs. We’ll get Kirilloff back shortly. We should get Royce back at some point to be, hopefully, a much better version of Nick Gordon and get 4 starts a week in LF/CF/SS. We have Garlick as an emergency lefty masher if needed. I think we’re fine offensively. I can’t see them giving up anything for a bat. As mentioned above, some bullpen help is probably the biggest need. We can’t throw Thielbar, Jax, Duran, and Lopez every night. We can’t afford to keep throwing away games with these other guys. Unfortunately, they could’ve addressed that with a few million dollars instead of prospect capital, but that ship has long sailed.
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